Monday, January 08, 2007

It's been a while

Wow this is my first blog since getting back to Brindisi. So much to talk about, the year has started on the right foot. Coming back all my flights went as scheduled and everything was in place and the cats happy and feed when I returned.So what happened on my flight over? I’ll try to make this as short as possible. I had the first flight out of Brindisi at 6:40 AM; it’s the only way to catch other flights. We all board the plane on time only to sit this little plane for 1 hour and 40 minutes because of technical problem. The flight from Brindisi to Rome only takes about an hour and I had a ton flying still to do so I was not getting off on the right foot. I sprinted across the Rome airport knowing the only way I could make the next flight was if it was running late. Naturally it wasn’t so I went back Alitalia desk to figured out what they can do for me. Everyone knows that Alitalia is VERY helpful and to think I was dreaming of them putting me in first class but no, they found a flight into JFK that seemed ok but I hate JFK and this trip reminded me why. Upon arriving I was excited to see my bag followed and I went through customs with it in JFK (only to have them take my salami from Norcia, sometimes I’m just too honest!) and then rechecked it. Then I found my next obstacle, the Delta terminal at JFK. This was when Denver was snowed in. I had no sympathy because I wasn’t going anywhere near there and I had already been sitting in planes for almost 14 hours. Delta had a REAL mess as I counted that there was 8 flights leaving from the same gate at approximately the same time. The staff was frazzled and no help. They would blurt out a city and those people would flood the gate area. My flight boarded only about 20 minutes late so I was happy until we sat in the plane again for about an hour waiting for a fuel truck! Finally I arrive in Indianapolis about 5 hours later at than the original plan (11:30 PM local time or 5:30 AM to me) and just to make the trip complete my bag was not there. So in total the trip consisted of: two very late flights, one sprint across an airport, one completely messed gate area, and one lost bag. My bag did finally arrive at 10:00 PM Christmas eve. I hope Delta had to pay an arm and a leg to deliver it because, every time I called they didn’t know where my bag was. I was freaking out, as it would be a really boring Christmas if you had nothing to give anyone.After this the rest of the trip went great. I can’t believe every one I saw and where we went. I spent a lot of time in cars and around babies. I want to thank everyone that hosted me, but especially Aaron and Rita for letting me stay with them in Cleveland for two nights. I still have the Batman flashlight that I won on New Year’s Day. It’s still fun to play with in the bars here. Are you Batman? Also, Lori I stole your SpongeBob wall walker. I’ve learned that it will stain the wall if it sticks to one place too long!

5 comments:

Welcome back to Italy! Sounds like you had a good time, looking forward to hearing more about. Sorry about your meat. I took some home once and they took it when I landed in the States too. They claimed it is because Italy "dosen't cook their meat right" but I think they just wanted it for their lunch! At least I got to keep my cheese and wine!

Good to be back. I have a good story about customs and the meat. Well not much of a story. There was just something about how he said "Go over there and show your salami to that guy." I wanted to crack a joke but the customs guys didn't seem like the joking type.